I was surprised when we were car shopping last fall. It was surprisingly all right at all six dealerships we visited. OK, most of the salesdudes were clueless about their product, but they weren’t at all pushy and were genuinely helpful about finding a properly equipped example for us to check out.
I guess what made it easiest is that we saw a few cars, went home, and handled the remaining negotiations via e-mail. We didn’t see anyone again in person until the deal was done. I feel so much better about car dealerships after that. Maybe the lousy sales of recent years made dealerships more appreciative of potential customers, but they treated us like fellow humans. That was often not true in the past.